


the fist is a weapon the size of a heart

by theinfamouswordsmith



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, F/F, Genre-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 22:12:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11883888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinfamouswordsmith/pseuds/theinfamouswordsmith
Summary: Sara thought about shooting Viktor Nikiforov right between the eyes. He didn’t even have any bodyguards, just a little girl, or maybe a boy, dressed in all black like make-shift armor and flicking a straight razor in and out. He was outnumbered.  She could end this right here, had her hand on her gun already, pulling back the hammer, ready to fire.The girl met her stare, blue eyes huge and piercing, and Sara felt like she’d been frozen.--Sara Crispino is the daughter of the most powerful man in Italy.When she watches her father submit his empire to a young upstart from Russia, she makes herself a promise: that the first chance she gets, she will kill Viktor Nikiforov and Mila Babicheva.





	the fist is a weapon the size of a heart

           The first time Sara saw her was on the worst day of her life.

           It hadn’t been a good few months. Sara wasn’t young enough to believe the comforting half-truths her father told her to hide the fact that the Crispino family was losing territory every day – first their holdings overseas, slowly closing in through the mainland until they were trapped, only a few loyal families scattered across the south of Italy and on Sicily.

           Mamma didn’t like it, but by the time she was fourteen, Sara was already an ace sniper in her father’s ranks.  Her fifteenth birthday present was a Remington MSR, engraved with her initials.  Sara could strip it and reassemble it in under a minute. Michele was supposed to be the fighter, all his “noble knight” persona from when they were kids in the Catholic school and the other girls pulled Sara’s pigtails for not being girly enough.

           Papa knew Michele couldn’t fight for shit.

           Sara was sixteen now.  Every day was a little more frightening than the last.  Her best few days had been two weeks back, when she’d laid, on her back, held up by a support beam in a warehouse by a shipping dock for two days, silent, until her target had come in at last and she’d hung suspended by one leg as she took aim, shot him from a thousand feet, and disappeared into the air. At least she’d had a win, instead of hiding like a dog in their Sicily home, waiting for the end.   

Sara’s mother held her tight to one hip, her twin brother Michele on the other, as their father stood, facing the man that had chased them into this rabbit’s warren, negotiating terms.

           He really was as beautiful as they said.  He wore waist-length silver-blonde hair in a low ponytail, strands scattered across the shoulders of his expensive suit – Italian, Sara thought – with a smile cold as the Moscow ice that bore him.   

           He could be as beautiful as he wanted.  It didn’t make Sara hate him any less.

           Papa said he had demanded Papa bring Mamma, Sara and Michele to the meeting.  Sara figured it was so that they could watch as the strongest man in Italy bowed and scraped for a Russian upstart barely old enough to shave.

_Nikiforov,_ they called him. The Ice King of Moscow.  He’d taken the Russian _Bratva_ at seventeen; at twenty-one, he was finally putting his delicate fingers around the last of Europe.  The Crispino family of Sicily was the last holdout to his empire, and now – and now, Sara had to watch as the only man she respected bent the knee, as if everything Sara had fought for, everyone she’d killed and watched die, meant nothing.           

           Sara thought about shooting Viktor Nikiforov right between the eyes.  She didn’t get why they hadn’t killed him already – he was standing right there, on her turf, and Papa was just letting him live, like his very presence didn’t insult _cosa nostra_ , like his stupid smirking grin didn’t make a mockery of everything the Crispino family had worked for all these years.  He didn’t even have any bodyguards, just a little girl, or maybe a boy, dressed in all black like make-shift armor and flicking a straight razor in and out.  “ _Gopnik_ ,” she’d heard Mamma say, and although she didn’t know the word, she knew it didn’t mean anything good. Even Mamma had two bodyguards with them, and Sara had a pistol in a hidden holster under her skirt.  He was outnumbered.  She could end this right here, had her hand on her gun already, pulling back the hammer, ready to fire.

           The girl met her stare, blue eyes huge and piercing, and Sara felt like she’d been frozen.  The girl’s hand flicked, barely visible if Sara hadn’t been staring, and a knife whistled past Sara’s ear and embedded itself in the wall.

           Nikiforov’s hand flew out as he turned to the girl and said “Мила, достаточно.” They conversed in hushed tones until Papa interrupted, hot and angry as he should be at the slight.

           “You savage, you bring this girl into my home, let your little punk nearly _kill_ my _daughter,_ ” Papa snarled, and Nikiforov put his hand up and turned to his translator.

           Once he had heard Papa’s words, he replied, in English “First of all, Don Piero, ‘this girl’ is my second, Mila Babicheva. You will treat her with the respect she is accorded.” He narrowed his eyes at Papa’s sneer. “I do hope, sir, that you are not beginning to undermine our agreement already?”

           “…Continue.”

           “Ms. Babicheva informed me that your daughter, who has a concealed handgun in a thigh holster under her dress, was preparing to draw her weapon in what was likely an attempt on my life.  She threw the knife as a warning.  If my second wanted to kill your daughter, lady Sara would be dead.”

           Sara expected, _wanted_ the next words out of her father’s mouth to be “don’t you dare threaten my daughter, you Slavic son of a bitch.”  In reality, he turned to Sara with a frustrated glare and said “Don’t you dare try and pull your guns on my guests again, or I’ll ground you for a month.”

           He turned back, kept signing his empire over to a pretty boy from two thousand miles away, and Sara decided two things: one, she would never trust a man to protect her, and two, the first chance she got, she would kill Viktor Nikiforov and Mila Babicheva.

* * *

 

           The first time they met as equals, Sara was ready to make good on her promise.

           When Papa died in firefight with some upstart gang from Milan, all eyes had turned to Michele to take up his mantle and continue the family name.  It was the way things always had been: when the family turned to Mickey, Mickey turned to Sara.  They were _Don_ and _Dona_ Crispino, beautiful and terrible – although which was which was anyone’s guess. At twenty-four, she was the _de facto_ leader of the greatest criminal family in Italy, and her body buzzed with the power it had always been meant to hold.

           She knew a visit from the Nikiforov clan was coming. She’d been pushing boundaries in Barcelona and Paris, seeing how far they’d let her strain her leash until they decided to snap it back again.

           When Mila Babicheva showed up in Sicily, dressed in a sharply-tailored suit and a pair of cap-toe oxfords, she thought it was almost too perfect.

           Babicheva had been making a name for herself these last eight years – “the new Lady Death,” if you asked some, or “the scourge of St. Petersburg.”  She was renowned for her savagery, her efficiency as a killer and assassin.

           Sara knew if you were renowned as an assassin, you weren’t doing your job right.

           So, here she was, seated in an armchair that had cost her over five thousand euro and dressed in an ensemble that had cost her ten times that, her consigliere Emil to her right and her bodyguards to her left, with Babicheva only five feet away from the woman who would be her end

           “Well, if it isn’t Nikiforov’s little whore,” Sara said, and smiled at the way Babicheva’s face twitched. “I see your master’s still teaching you how to dress.”

           “Do you know why I am here?”  Babicheva’s voice was thick, a heavy Russian accent dripping on every word.

           “Probably. Truth is, I don’t care.” Sara shifted forward, leaning on her knees and steepling her fingers. “Sending some _gopnik_ to talk to me? You tell your _pakhan_ he insults me. He insults _mia famiglia_. And there a lot of things I can bear, but an affront to the family -- you understand why I can't let that pass, don’t you?” She leaned back again, careful to arrange her limbs to project nonchalance, effortless power. “Tell you what, I think I’ll send your pretty little head back to him in a pretty little box, hmm?  Ship it right to Moscow, or Petersburg, or wherever that son of a bitch is hiding, just so he can see how much an affront to my family means to me.”

           Babicheva was silent for a moment, though Sara didn’t miss how her fingers twitched toward the weapons she kept concealed. Finally, she met Sara’s eyes and said “What is time?”

           Sara scowled. “What?”

           Babicheva raised her hand, tapping her wrist as if there were a watch there.  “What is time?”

           “Seven. Why, you have somewhere to be?”

           She thought for a second, then smiled, looking at Sara with the same savage glare that had frozen her eight years ago. “I am _pakhan_.”

           “What kind of game are you trying to play?”

           “While we talk, my men are doing -- как сказать это по-английский – coup. Popovich leads in St. Petersburg, and he is weak. I am true heir to Nikiforov empire. I am _pakhan._ ”

           “Nikiforov is dead?”

           “Gone.  Ran away with a Japanese Interpol agent, impossible to find.”

           Sara’s eyes narrowed. “You’re joking.”

           “Dona Sara, I would never.”

           “Then why are you here?”

           Babicheva took a few steps toward Sara, and she held out her hand when Sara’s bodyguards tensed.  “I am most powerful woman in north of Europe. You are most powerful woman in south of Europe.  I think it is time we are renewing our alliance.”

           “If you think for a second I’ll kowtow to you like my father did, you-”

           Babicheva cut her off. “No. Not _shestyorka._ _Sovietnik._  My first advisor. Italy, France, Spain – you can have them.  Report to me what you do, what trouble you have, what money you make.  We are allies, not commander and soldier.”

           Sara turned to Emil.  “Do you think she’s bluffing?” she said in Italian, hoping that Babicheva didn’t have some hidden skill in the language she wasn’t letting on.          

           “Sara, this might sound crazy… but I don’t. No one has heard from Nikiforov in months, everything has been coming from his _sovietnik,_ Georgi Popovich, or Babicheva, who was his _obshchak._ There have been reports that control from St. Petersburg is slipping. I expect within the hour we’ll have confirmation that Babicheva’s men have taken it from Popovich.”

           She turned back to Babicheva. “Then, since you asked so nicely, I believe we can come to an agreement.”

           “Please, call me Mila.”  Mila took a few steps forward, again, until she was nearly straddling Sara, and leaned in. In a voice no more than a whisper, pitched so that only Sara could hear, she said “if you ever call me a whore or punk or _gopnik_ again, I’ll take you and your brother, shove you both in a shipping crate, slit his throat and let you starve to death with the body.”

           Sara smiled and matched her pitch. “And if you ever threaten me again, I’ll track down your Viktor and his pretty Japanese boy, and I’ll mail you to them piece by piece.”

           Mila leaned back, grinning broadly.  “Then we are agreed! I think you’ll –“

           One of Sara’s guards burst in. “So sorry to disturb you, _donna_ Sara, ma’am, but there are some Canadian gangsters upstairs with tommy guns shooting people and saying you sold them cheap cocaine?”

           “ _Isabella Yang,_ ” Sara and Mila both hissed simultaneously.

           Sara rose to direct her bodyguards to come with her, but Mila stopped her.  She shrugged off her jacket and handed it to Emil, rolling up the sleeves of her white dress shirt and saying “Please, lady Sara, allow me.  A show of faith, if you will.”

           She drew twin Jagdkommando tri-blade knives from her hip sheaths and Sara gaped. “Surely you aren’t planning – a gun, at least.”

           Mila smiled again, and Sara felt the familiar chill go down her spine. “For Yang’s punks? Why waste ammunition?”

           She took off up the stairs.  Sara followed, slowly, guided by the sounds of screams and gunfire. When she reached the top, she opened the door and saw Mila, breathing heavily and surrounded by Yang dead, attempting to wipe blood off her face and failing. She turned to face Sara, white teeth cutting through the red smear on her cheeks. “Almost finished!” she said cheerily, then whirled around and stabbed a wounded gunman in the throat, twisting her blade and pulling it out as he slumped against the bar and collapsed.

           She was a vision in black, white, and blood-red, stepping gingerly over bodies and tossing her hair over her shoulder, grabbing a discarded sport jacket to finish wiping her hands and face.  Sara could only distantly think that blood was a surprisingly good look on her.

           Maybe, just maybe, Mila Babicheva’s death could wait a while.

* * *

 

           The first time Sara trusted her, she thought she’d never get to again.

           The last two years had brought the kind of profit and control Sara had only dreamed of. Under her control, and with Mila’s help, the Crispino family had risen to a height that made her father’s criminal empire look like the schoolhouse drawings she did at six.  Michele was still the face of the family, but it was Sara’s name that was whispered like a prayer or curse over a bullet at the break of dawn, her name that their enemies screamed in fear when oblivion came for them.

           One year ago, Mila had asked her for the first time.

           “You’re the best sniper in Europe,” she’d said, her voice dripping palatal through the speaker of Sara’s iPhone 5.  “You’re the only one I want.”

           Sara knew she was good.  She knew she wasn’t the best, but hearing Mila’s voice claim it stirred the fire in her belly that told her she could be.  Mila didn’t flatter and placate, she demanded what she wanted; if she told Sara she wanted her to do a job in Hamburg, she said it because she believed in her.

           It was intoxicating, having her name be the first one on someone’s lips. One taste of that feeling, and Sara was gone, slotting herself into Mila’s work as soon as the invitation came, letting herself get caught up in feeling wanted and admired instead of feared.

           Two months ago, Mila had told her they were going to be working a job together.  It was in Moscow, cleaning up the remnants of the gangs that had sprung up in Viktor’s absence.  Mila’d moved operations there, not exactly abandoning St. Petersburg, and now she had a few more pieces to maneuver before the city was under her thumb again.  Tonight’s piece: a man called Vasiliev, who’d been fancying himself the new king of Moscow’s underworld, engaging his men in a turf war with Mila’s that had gone on for too long.  He was supposed to be at a fancy fundraiser cocktail party hosted atop the Ritz-Carlton over Red Square tonight, and Mila would be on-the-ground recon for Sara so Sara could put a bullet through his skull from a rooftop over.

           The whole thing felt off. Sara had spent a thousand nights perched atop a roof in her black flak jacket and beanie, watching the world through a scope and her sights, barely breathing, her finger the only thing between a quiet evening and death.  A few of those nights had even been spent like this, with an earpiece and microphone, talking to her man on the ground.  However, what was in her sights – Mila, in Sara’s Versace cocktail gown that pulled too-tight on her shoulders and four-inch Louboutins that she could barely walk in, muttering Russian curses into Sara’s ear as she tried to find their target at the event – that unnerved her.  

           Objectively, Mila looked fantastic, pale neck arched like an empress above the high line of the dress, hair gathered into a chignon that covered her undercut; objectively, Sara knew she had to be the one in that room, speaking a language Sara didn’t know, looking for a man Sara wouldn’t recognize, dressed in Sara’s clothes so he wouldn’t recognize her.

           Somehow, in an objectively beautiful ensemble, in an objectively ideal situation, Mila looked uncomfortable and drawn in, hugging the walls like she didn’t practically own the building.

           “I can’t wear my knives with this,” she’d said, and Sara shrugged.

           “I can loan you a thigh holster, for your handgun,” she’d replied. “I’ll be watching from my nest. As soon as I have a clear shot, cut and run.”

           Mila had grumbled something about running, in those shoes and that dress, and Sara had laughed. “I’ve managed since I was fourteen. You’ll be okay.”

           Now Sara realizes she had her mother to teach her how to walk and hold herself befitting her father’s status.  She’s not sure Mila’s had to wear a dress like this in her life.  She’s seen Mila move fluidly, cutting through men like butter.  Sara’s not sure she’ll ever be able to get the image out of her head: Mila, rolling her shoulders forward as she drew her knives, spinning them through her fingers and palm before burying one to the hilt in a Yang man’s gut. It’s not that Isabella is bad, per se, it’s that she’s just too persistent, and Mila needed to send a message.  But her work with the knives, the wave-like motion of her shoulders, her fingers skittering and dancing across the hilt – Sara knows death, and Mila makes it into art.

           This – hobbling like a twelve-year-old in mama’s Chanel pumps – is not art.

           The job needs to be over.  Sara considered asking Mila for a better description or photograph, but even with as much as Mila’s English has improved, most Russian men looked the same to Sara.  She’d have to rely on Mila being able to find him, so she could take her shot and they could all get out of there.

           Mila made a move, creeping along the periphery to get a better view.  The flow of incoming guests had slowed to a trickle, and as much as these kinds of jobs were a “hurry-up-and-wait” ordeal, it shouldn’t be more than half an hour until they could finish.  Mila took a perch at the bar, ordering something in quiet Russian, then started scanning the room.  Sara heard a brief exchange between Mila and her second, a boy named Yuri who was dressed as a waiter across the room, then was flooded with relief as she heard the words she’d been waiting for.

           “That’s him.  Eggplant suit, about fifteen feet in front of me and to the right, standing at the table. As soon as you get a clean shot, take it.”

           Over the next forty seconds, time slowed to a crawl.

           Sara saw it all.  Mila making eye contact with Vasiliev.  Her nervously brushing her hair behind her ear – exposing her earpiece, her undercut – Vasiliev reaching for his gun, Mila reaching for hers, too slow, the dress restricting her movement – the shot ringing through the Moscow air, doubled as Sara pulled her trigger a tenth of a second too late.

           Through her scope, she saw Mila double over, hands pressed to the bullet wound in her side, then collapse.

**Author's Note:**

> i did it i finished something. ish. 
> 
> you can find me at paledreamsblackmoths.tumblr.com ! come yell at me about lesbians.


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